"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing visible to torment them, groaning more piteously than any that I had hitherto heard in Hell. "Mercy upon us," said I, "what causes these people to complain more than the rest, when they have neither torture nor devil near them?" "O," said the angel, "the less torment they have without, the more they have within. These are refractory heretics, atheists, antichristians, worldly- wise ones, abjurers of the faith, persecutors of the church, and an infinity ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... kettle tied to his tail, hunted by a pack of rascally school-boys; one of the little wretches had thrown a stone at him, and poor Bill was bleeding. I managed to stop him, somehow, and to free the poor beast from his implement of torture, and left him licking his wound by the roadside, while I caught two of the boys and thrashed them soundly. I reserved thrashing the others until a convenient season, but they all caught it. I read them a pretty lesson on cruelty to animals. Bill followed me home, and I have ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a little. But this period of rest strengthens it for a renewal of war during the remainder of the day and night. In form the mosquito very much resembles the gnat, but is somewhat larger. This instrument of torture is his nose, which is quite as long as his body, and sharper than the finest needle. Being unable to rest because of the mosquitoes, Heywood ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... times no! I will never again expose myself to the horrible torture of being close to her, of seeing her, of touching her dress as I pass by her, and yet not be able to say a word to her. No, I renounce a torture which you suppose will bring me happiness, but which consumes and eats away my very life; to see her in the presence ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Stop! You must not torture the old man!" cried a voice, and the mate of the Good Hope stepped in front of the ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... nevertheless they deserve our sympathy. The hideousness of the world tormented them, and, in order to make it beautiful, they endured everything. Recall to mind More decapitated, Campanella put seven times to the torture, Buonarotti with a chain round his neck, Saint-Simon dying of want; many others. They might have lived in peace; but no! they marched on their way with their heads towards the sky, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... brutal hands. He seemed to see her in the room where he ran her down, her staring eyes; he seemed to hear her screams; he remembered how hot his blood was then, though now it ran like ice at the memory. If only he had not helped to torture the old Jew in San Juan; if only he could blot out his share in all those acts of lust and blood. And through all his horrid thoughts came the sweet voice of Brilliana singing the sweet, brave words, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... you want?" he asked excitedly. From his tone it was evident that the soldiers feared everybody in that district, through which they went scattering death, destruction and torture. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... torture and retard civilisation. Its methods of perpetuation are unchanged from the middle ages. What is lese-majeste but a survival of feudalism, a kind of slavery to inviolable tradition—the immunity of the monarch and ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... of it? We would fain believe, but the facts of experience seem too strong for us. A hundred thousand Armenians butchered at the will of an inhuman despot, a whole city buried under a volcano's fiery hail, countless multitudes suffering the slow torture of death by famine—can such things be and God really care? Nor is it only great world tragedies like these which challenge our faith. The question is pressed upon us, often with sickening keenness, by the commonplace ills of our own commonplace lives: the cruel wrong of another's sin, the long, ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... for death George approached the Emperor. "What wouldst thou?" cried Diocletian angrily, having heard from his proconsul Dacian that this young man deserved torture. "Liberty, sir, for the innocent Christians," answered the martyr. "At the least liberty, since their liberty can hurt ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... would have been exposed to a severe rating cross examination by the learned Serjeant—fortified by Winkle's most damaging slip about the White Horse incident—who would have forced out of him all the incidents. We can almost hear the Serjeant subject the Defendant to the torture. ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... dear fellow. No more introductions to-night, please. I've just suffered torture from an unspeakable youth from Aberdeen, who expected me to rejoice with him because Oxford is at last recognising the 'exeestence of a metapheesical principle in ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... superfluity of employees meant easier work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on—it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery—it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was determined by ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... interrupted. "Do you know why I said I shouldn't have time to dress to-night? Because I haven't any evening clothes. As a matter of fact, I haven't much but the clothes I stand in. One thing after another's gone against me; all the infernal ingenuities of chance. It's been a slow Chinese torture, the kind where they keep you alive to have more fun killing you." He straightened himself with a sudden blush. "Oh, I'm all right now—getting on capitally. But I'm still walking rather a narrow plank; and if I do your work well enough—if I ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... sound passed his lips. Letting fall the knife, he pushed the ring down over the wound and the length of his foot. One foot was free, but only one; he was still as much a prisoner as before. Could he bear the torture again? ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... Adornment Clothing and Dress Chapter 4: Industrial Life Home Life Agriculture Manufacture and Trade Hunting and Fishing Chapter 5: Amusements Games Music Dancing The Potato Dance, or Pina Camote The Bee Dance, or Pina Pa-ni-lan The Torture Dance The Lovers' Dance The Duel Dance Chapter 6: General Social Life The Child Marriage Rice Ceremony Head Ceremony "Leput," or Home Coming Polygamy and Divorce Burial Morals Slavery Intellectual Life Superstitions Chapter 7: Spanish Attempts ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... spare little man, had lost eighteen pounds. She, naturally well covered, was getting thin herself, but that she did not notice, too busy all day long, and too occupied in thinking of her "man." To watch him week by week, more hopeless, as the months dragged on, was an acute torture, to disguise which was torture even more acute. She had long seen that there was no bright side, but if she admitted that she knew she would go down; so she did not. And she carefully kept from Gerhardt such matters as David's overgrowing his strength, because she could not feed him ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... thirty-one Miamis; on September 9th, one Frenchman, five Chippewas, and fifteen Miamis, etc.] seventeen of whom they surrendered to the British, keeping the others either to make them slaves or else to put them to death with torture. During the fall they confined themselves mainly to watching the Ohio and the Wilderness road, and harassing the immigrants who passed ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... like to see the instruments of torture at work—the process of lamb-shearing in active operation," Williams explained as he shook hands and waved him into his private room. After a few easy remarks on the methods of doing business the broker continued, "I flatter myself that for so small an investment ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... where he placed his feet, he cared no longer whither he went, but his one mad longing was to get away from this dreadful thing, this torture which clung to him and would not let him go. Through Thursley village he passed, his eyes straining in his agony, his heart bursting within him, and he had won his way to the crest of Thursley Down, still stung forward by stab and blow, when his spirit weakened, his giant ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to a remarkable degree yet in spite of his curved shoulders he was of more than average height, and of a breadth incredible. But his face! who can describe it? Seamed and scarred in deep gashes, as though by some hideous torture, the nose broken and flattened almost upon the cheek, there remained but little human about the awful countenance except the eyes. But these, as I found later, were of a beauty and expressiveness to make ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... struck. These swift and intangible persecutors were found a far surer and more effectual means of annoyance than larger bodies. As all the warriors were converts of the Canadian missions, and as prisoners were an article of value, cases of torture were not very common; though now and then, as at Exeter, they would roast some poor wretch alive, or bite off his fingers and sear the stumps ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... round her neck. If he could have settled the whole affair by running away, he would have done so, but Gollipeck was still in Melbourne, and Gaston knew he could not leave the town without the terrible old man finding it out, and bringing him back. At last the torture of wondering how much Kitty knew was too much for him, and he determined to go to the Melbourne gaol and interview her. So he obtained an order from the authorities to see her, and prepared to start next morning. He sent the servant out ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... night. It has another cry like that of a hen just caught, but the sounds which have earned for it its bad name, and which I have heard but once to perfection, are indescribable, the most appalling that can be imagined, and scarcely to be heard without shuddering; I can only compare it to a boy in torture, whose screams are being stopped by being strangled. I have offered rewards for a specimen, but without success. The only European who had seen and fired at one agreed with the natives that it is of the size of a pigeon, with a long tail. I believe it is a Podargus or Night Hawk," In a subsequent ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Each hour was torture to the boy. The restricted life of a great city orphanage was the other extreme of the world compared with the Limberlost. He was afraid for his life every minute. The heat was intense. The heavy wading-boots rubbed his feet until they ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... before him. He seldom slept for more than two or three consecutive hours in the night, and the time of wakefulness was often terrible. The various sounds which marked the stages from midnight to dawn had grown miserably familiar to him; worst torture to his mind was the chiming and striking of clocks. Two of these were in general audible, that of Marylebone parish church, and that of the adjoining workhouse; the latter always sounded several minutes after its ecclesiastical neighbour, and with a difference of note which seemed to Reardon very ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... out of me," replied Edwards, stoutly. "Do your most. Torture me if you like. I defy ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... conducted to France, and had hoped to be rescued by the way; but unfortunately for him, M. de Bellievre had kept such good watch, that neither Spaniards nor Lorraines, nor leaguers, had been able to approach. In the prison Salcede hoped; during the torture, on the car, even on the scaffold, he still hoped. He wanted neither courage nor resignation; but he was one of those who defend themselves to their last breath. He darted curious glances toward the crowd, but constantly turned away, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... a termagant, imperious, prodigal, lewd, profligate wench, as ever breathed; she used to rantipole about the house, pinch the children, kick the servants, and torture the cats and the dogs; she would rob her father's strong box, for money to give the young fellows that she was fond of. She had a noble air, and something great in her mien, but such a noisome infectious breath, ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... with a sharp spasm of laughter, mirthless, but consciously expressive of all the familiar processes of self-effacement under torture. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Dr. Don Antonio Valdez, the Cura of Tinto. It was acted before his friend Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui[FN1] in about 1775. Taking the name of his maternal ancestor, the Inca Tupac Amaru, the ill-fated Condorcanqui rose in rebellion, was defeated, taken, and put to death under torture, in the great square of Cuzco. In the monstrous sentence 'the representation of dramas as well as all other festivals which the Indians celebrate in memory of their Incas' was prohibited.[FN2] This is a clear proof that before 1781 these Quichua ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... fifteen years, from 1580 to 1595, in the single district of Lorraine; and as many more fled out of the country; whole villages were depopulated, and fifteen persons destroyed themselves rather than submit to the torture which, under the administration of this successor of Draco and rival of Jeffries, was the first step taken in the trial of an accused person. The application of the rack and other instruments of torment, in the examination of prisoners, was recommended by him in ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... disturbed Penhallow was the hideous screams of the battery horses. "Ah! the pity of it. They had no cause to die for—no duty—no choice." As he assisted in replacing the wreckage of the guns, he still heard the cries of the animals who so dumb in peace found in torture voices of anguish unheard before—unnatural, strange. The appalling tempest of shells screamed on and on, while the most of them fell beyond the Crest. Penhallow looked up to note their flight. They darted overhead shrill-voiced or hissing. There ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... have to deal with the same petty cases, while other judges and physicians feel clearly that every case offers something new and that the repetition as such is neither conspicuous nor disagreeable. We find actors who feel it a torture to play the same role every evening for several weeks, and there are actors who, as one of the most famous actresses assured me after the four hundredth performance of her star role, repeat their parts ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... the Niagara region made Mosely's case their own and determined to prevent his delivery up to the American authorities to be taken to the land of the free and the home of the brave, knowing that there for him to be brave meant torture and death, and that death alone could set him free. Under the leadership of Herbert Holmes, a yellow man,[31] a teacher and preacher, they lay around the jail night and day to the number of from two to four hundred to prevent the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... painful anxiety which is raised in my mind when I read such a statement as this. I think I see my poor Elizabeth, the wife or slave to some wild savage; her children, merciful Heaven! my grandchildren, growing up as the brutes of the field, in ignorance and idolatry. It is torture, my dear Alexander—absolute torture, and requires long prayer and meditation to restore my mind to its usual tone, and to enable me to bow to the ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... said the headsman's 'prentice, and folding his arms he stood right in front of the defenceless wretch. "My lad," said he, "you know, don't you, that I have been the headsman's assistant these six years? You know, don't you, that I am accustomed to torture and kill man and beast in cold blood? You know the sort of smile with which I am wont to reply to the agonised despair of my victim, and the memory of it ought to make your brain freeze in your skull. Very ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... had been nourished upon a more or less perfect edition of what we know as the 'Mosaic Law.' Her faith had been fed by forms. She moved amidst a world full of the cruelties and dark conceptions of a mysterious divine power which torture heathenism apart from Christianity. She had forced her way through all that, and laid hold of the vital centre. And there, a way out amidst cruelty and murder, amidst the unutterable abominations and terrors ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... torture a lemon over it. [He makes a gesture as of twisting a lemon peel. She hands him his tea.] Thanks! So you do it to-morrow ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... accepted, his position would become both better and worse at the same time, he acquired comfort, and lost his dignity; it was a fine and complete unhappiness converted into a repulsive and ridiculous state of torture: something like the case of a blind man who should recover the sight of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... modulation: "Yes, I thought it was a pretty good story myself, even if the joke was on me." And again their laughter and applause. She had no weapons with which to fight such cold-blooded selfishness. To stay meant eternal torture. She saw herself forced to face his complacent sneer day after day and death on the ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... she, "is that the summit of earthly happiness, the end of life—to love? I don't think it is. It may be the extreme of mortal misery, it may be sheer waste of time, and fruitless torture of feeling. If Schiller had said to be loved, he might have come nearer the truth. Is not that another thing, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Elza very deeply. A new torture came from it now. Did she love me—or Tarrano? I remembered the gentleness of the man with her. His dignity, his power—his undoubted genius. And who, what was I? A mere news-gatherer. A man of no force, and little personality. A nonentity. Sometimes as in my jealousy I contemplated Elza with ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... De Courtenay's hand. Ah, De Courtenay! Where was De Courtenay? A captive assuredly, if he was one. They had both gone down together under the foam of that angry human sea. And, if he was here, his antagonist must be somewhere near. With exquisite torture, McElroy slowly turned his head to right and left. At the second motion his face brushed something close against his shoulder. It was cloth, a rough surface corrugated and encrusted with ridges,—what but the braid on the blue coat of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... an elderly woman of serene visage had appeared in his bachelor den, and declaring herself a nurse sent by friends, had proceeded to make him more comfortable than he had believed possible, with those aching members touching up every nerve to torture. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... of Justinian. The conspirators were detected and seized, with daggers hidden under their garments: Marcellus died by his own hand, and Sergius was dragged from the sanctuary. [66] Pressed by remorse, or tempted by the hopes of safety, he accused two officers of the household of Belisarius; and torture forced them to declare that they had acted according to the secret instructions of their patron. [67] Posterity will not hastily believe that a hero who, in the vigor of life, had disdained the fairest offers ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... interference might avert. Though the most gentle and unoffending in her nature, yet she was capable of warm and active friendship, and, of course, was not a little astounded and hurt when the young lady replied—"Surely, Miss Harewood, you cannot be ignorant that all our great medical practitioners torture and kill animals, for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of diseases, and, in many cases, undoubtedly for the purpose of learning how much suffering bodies of a certain size and texture are capable of enduring? Now I don't doubt, Miss Hanson, being ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... futility, a week of inaction, thanks to that flesh wound in his leg. Futility seemed to haunt, yes, and torture him! Even his rehabilitation of Larry the Bat, with all its attendant risk and danger, had been futile as far as she was concerned. And he had counted so much on that! And that had failed, and nothing was left to him but to ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in Ireland; life peerages; civil service appointments; the use of torture in India; law reform; difficulties in the execution of the treaty of Paris; the questions connected with the Isle of Serpents and Bulgrad, on the new Russo-Bessarabian frontier; the disposal of the Aland Islands ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... soul in torture came eddying up in confused words; all that came to the mortal ear, listening unseen, were, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... leave this world before the promises of our fortune-tellers are made good to us, we should think ourselves deprived of some great advantages, and seem disappointed and forlorn. But if, through life, we are in continual suspense, still expecting, still desiring, and are in continual pain and torture, good Gods! how pleasant must that journey be which ends in security and ease! How pleased am I with Theramenes! Of how exalted a soul does he appear! For, although we never read of him without tears, yet that illustrious man is ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... explanations or digressions—until you possibly wonder what it is all about. For you have not yet seen the barbaric frame which will hedge in the whole—the barbaric frame in all truth, since it is gradually closing in on us on every side until, like some mediaeval torture-room, we may have the very life crushed out of us by a cruel pressure. But enough of fine phrases; while there is time let ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... first Sunday would be a success. And the chapel, of course, had a bell,—a bell which was declared by Mrs. Fenwick to be the hoarsest, loudest, most unmusical, and ill-founded miscreant of a bell that was ever suspended over a building for the torture of delicate ears. It certainly was a loud and brazen bell; but Mr. Fenwick expressed his opinion that there was nothing amiss with it. When his wife declared that it sounded as though it came from the midst of the shrubs at their own front gate, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... often sleepless; I get out of bed, wretched and exhausted, with the thought of a long day before me, which will not bring me a single joy. The society of others tortures me, and I avoid it only to torture myself. Everything I do fills me with disgust. It can't go on for ever. I can't stand such a life any longer. I will kill myself rather than live like this.... I don't believe in anything, and I ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... hypocrites; they never changed belief, or produced any other conviction than that of wrong and outrage. The soul itself is beyond the reach of any human authority, not to be conquered by any device of terror or torture. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pretense of a story he said hard things about the laws and ill- government of England, things which it was treason to whisper. In those days treason was a terrible word covering a great deal, and death and torture were like to be the fate of any one who spoke his mind ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the not very distant future, they would have known that every sigh and groan that cruelty had wrung from them in that place of torture would be avenged; they would have seen loyal soldiers swarming in its streets, their old comrades in misery torn from the grasp of their merciless jailers, and the soulless "Southern Chivalry" thrust into their place; they would have seen red-handed vengeance ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... smiled on him in the Bludston factory. Fear laid a cold grip on his heart. He thought of pleading weakness and running away to the safe obscurity of his room. But it was too late. The procession was formed immediately, and he found himself in his place with his partner on his arm. Dinner was torture. What he said to his neighbours he knew not. He dared not look up the table where Lady Chudley sat in full view. Every moment he expected—ridiculous apprehension of an accusing conscience—Colonel Winwood ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... uniting the forms of paganism and Christianity, and, like paganism, misrepresenting the character of God, has resorted to practices no less cruel and revolting. In the days of Rome's supremacy, there were instruments of torture to compel assent to her doctrines. There was the stake for those who would not concede to her claims. There were massacres on a scale that will never be known until revealed in the judgment. Dignitaries of the church studied, under Satan their master, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... during the day to avoid being seen by the watchmen on the top of the fortress. I set out again on the march, when the night fell, and when daylight fell on the earth I arrived at Peten, and I rested myself by the Lake of Kamur. Then thirst came upon me and overwhelmed me. I suffered torture. My throat was burnt up, and I said, "This indeed is the taste of death." But I took courage, and collected my members (i.e. myself), for I heard the sounds that are made by flocks and herds. Then the Satiu of the desert ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... thankful, for I cannot bear this awful place longer. I believe they must torture the women here. They will torture me some day. Do your best to get me out of here and I will tell you everything. But," she wrote, "I fear you can never secure my release. I am confined ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... Beating heart! I deemed that sorrow, With its torture-rack of pain, Had eclipsed each bright to-morrow; And that Love could never rise Into life's cerulean skies, Singing the divine refrain— "Young again! ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... piece of furniture possessed of life;" he was his master's property, to be scourged, or tortured, or crucified. If a wealthy proprietor died under circumstances which excited suspicion of foul play, his whole household was put to torture. It is recorded that on the murder of a man of consular dignity by a slave, every slave in his possession was condemned to death. Slaves swelled the useless rabbles of the cities, and devoured the revenues of the State. All manual labor was done by slaves, in towns as well as the country; they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... "is the king's own favourite, and if any harm come to a lock of her hair, I tell you that there is not a living soul within this portcullis who will not die a death of torture. Fools, will you gasp out your lives upon the rack, or writhe in boiling oil, at the ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who, by stealth and at midnight, labor in this work of hell,—foul and dark as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... imperial persecutors, so a truer political prophet than Wolsey would have been found in the most ignorant of those poor men, for whom his myrmidons were searching in the purlieus of London, who were risking death and torture in disseminating the pernicious volumes of the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... pains of Tantalus, Sisyphus and all the rest of them show what an instinctive longing there is in all men both for end and endlessness of both good and ill, but as torture they are the merest mockery when compared with the fruitless chase to which poor Death has been condemned for ever and ever. Does it not seem as though he too must have committed some crime for which his sentence ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... When the torture of revival made me open my eyes, I found myself on the grass. Gentle hands raised my head, at the moment when I recovered my senses. Who had brought me to life again? Who was taking ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... heaven and earth, is borne by a trinity of angels; S. Michael, as the avenging spirit, stands a powerful figure in the foreground dividing the saved from the lost; the whole composition forming a heavenward cross on an earthly foundation. There are no caves and holes of torture with muscular bodies writhing within them; but in the despairing figures passing away on the right, some with heads bowed on clasped hands, others lifting up faces and arms in a vain cry for mercy, what suggestions there are of infinite remorse!—more dignified far than the distorted ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... said imperiously. "Now look at it Here you are in hell! Caged up with two old crows picking the life out of you. They'll kill you-I can see it; you're being killed by inches. You can't go anywhere, you can't have anything. Life is just torture for you-" ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... did not confront me with the torture of my darling, he did not bring tangible evidence of her suffering—he just sat and talked, describing with a remarkable clarity of language which seemed incredible in a foreigner, the 'amusements' ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... in England, and by those who really think they know whereof they speak, that although such torture-houses as Dotheboys Hall certainly did exist, even so lately as Dickens wrote, the publication of "Nicholas Nickleby," by turning attention upon the abuse, effectually swept it out of English civilization. We "smile bitterly," as romance people do, whenever we hear ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... contented in the shadow of the world's mourning? He spoke with passion of the millions disinherited before their birth, with infinite tenderness of those weak ones whom our social system condemns to a life of torture, just because they are weak. One loved the man for his great heart and for his ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... constantly changing phases of beauty in the action of the vessel and in the wonders of the sea and sky. In this passion his shy, sensitive nature was stronger than all the brute strength enjoyed by his shipmates; they could destroy his paintings, they could hurt his body, they could torture his heart. But they could not prevent him from following his ideal. Dauber died, and his pictures are lost. But in the poem describing his aims and his sufferings, Mr. Masefield has accomplished with his pen what Dauber failed to do with ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... from the depth of invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices united in a strange chant—'Let us destroy him! Let him be destroyed! What does he here among the dead? Let him be delivered back to torture! Let him be given ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and all the fine family estate behind,—pigs, poultry, and relations,—divil a tenpenny did we ever touch since. It's not your honor that will be angry to hear a few family misfortins," said Barney, hesitating to proceed with his narration, "Give me my hat, fellow," said 25I, "and don't torture me with your nonsense."— "May be it an't nonsense your honor means?" "And why not, sirrah?"—"Bekase it's not in your nature to spake light o' the dead." Up to this point, my attention had been divided between the Morning Chronicle which lay upon my breakfast table, and Barney's comical ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... else spoke of the frightful manner in which the knife had cut Merriwell, and then, despite his feeble struggles, Diamond was placed upon the instrument of torture. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... among the slaves of Oroetes. Of his fame as a physician someone had heard and he was called in to treat the dislocated ankle of King Darius. The wily Greek, longing for his home, feared that if he confessed to a knowledge of medicine there would be no chance of escape, but under threat of torture he undertook a treatment which proved successful. Then Herodotus tells his story—how, ill treated at home in Crotona, Democedes went to AEgina, where he set up as a physician and in the second year the State of AEgina hired his services at the price of a talent. In the third year, the Athenians ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... of the lynx, from which there appeared sparks of fire. He was black and tall; and he was crying out: "Extolled be the perfection of my Lord, who hath appointed me this severe affliction and painful torture until the day of resurrection!" When the party beheld him, their reason fled from them, and they were stupefied at the sight of his form, and retreated in flight; and the Emeer Moosa said to the Sheikh Abd-Es-Samad: "What is this?" He answered: "I know not what he is." And the emeer ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... pleasures of the flesh, continual haunting of companie, and all kind of merrines, both lawfull and vnlawfull, which are thinges directly contrary to the symptomes of Melancholie, whereof I spake, and further experience daylie proues how loath they are to confesse without torture, which witnesseth their guiltines, where by the contrary, the Melancholicques neuer spares to bewray themselues, by their continuall discourses, feeding therby their humor in that which they thinke no crime. As ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... torture that she suffered paralyzed all outward expression of pain. Quietly she put the book back on the table. Quietly she touched him, and called him ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... Mistris, That had the pleasure of his youth before me, And triumph'd in the fruit that you had by him, But that I think, to have the Bastard strangled Before thy face, and thou with speed to follow The way he leads thee, is sufficient torture, I would cut off thy nose, put out thine eyes, And set my foot on these bewitching lips, That had the start of mine: but as thou art, Goe to the ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... with Indians; but his conduct indicated no spark of pugnacity, and his surrender caused the loss of the entire north-west. Tecumseh and his warriors now advanced against the Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio frontiers; and the nameless horrors of Indian massacre and torture surged along the line of settlements. The frontiersmen flew to arms. General Harrison, with a commission from Kentucky, headed a large expedition to regain lost ground; but he only succeeded in building forts ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... motionless, in the hope that, by feigning death she might escape further wounds and torture. But the Indians came, and taking the arrows from her body, punctured her flesh with the jagged instruments, as a test whether physical sensation would disclose a sign of life remaining. She lay with eyes closed; not a muscle twitched nor a finger moved, while ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... proceed in quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and moment. It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into deep soundings, particularly torture and delight me. Something must have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members of my race; and when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate games for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to fit them ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... knight. It was said afterwards, in the absence of any graver possibility of accusation, that she liked her fine clothes. The tears rise to the eyes at such a suggestion. She was so natural that let us hope she did, the martyr Maid whose torture had already begun. If that mantle of gold gave her a moment of pleasure, it is something to be thankful for in the midst of the dismal shadows that were already closing round her. They were ready to give her any shining mantle, any beautiful ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... always destroys the essential qualities of our moral constitution, sometimes associating ideas of pleasure and enjoyment with those of blood and destruction; as, for example, it happened in the games of the circus under the Roman emperors; nay, some have even looked upon homicide and torture as religious duties, and a part of the worship due to the Divine Being! Fanaticism naturally engenders that sacrilegious alliance, and man, under its irresistible influence, becomes more frightful in his hatred, more cruel in his hostilities, than ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... hatred. All those repressing influences which lead the dwellers in civilized lands to some consistency of action are lacking here, and the morals of the natives run along other lines than ours. Faith and truth are no virtues, constancy and perseverance do not exist. The same man who can torture his wife to death from wanton cruelty, holding her limbs over the fire till they are charred, etc., will be inconsolable over the death of a son for a long time, and will wear a curl, a tooth or a finger-joint of the dead ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Claudio's, in which the souls are blown "about the pendent world." Shakspere may indeed have heard some of the old tales of a hot and cold purgatory, such as that of Drithelm, given by Bede,[91] whence (rather than from Dante) Milton drew his idea of an alternate torture.[92] But there again, the correspondence is only partial; whereas in Montaigne's APOLOGY OF RAIMOND SEBONDE we find, poetry apart, nearly every notion that enters into ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... supplications. Every nerve and fibre within him seemed tense with his agony of prayer. It was not the outcry for purity and peace, not a tender longing for forgiveness, not a filial remorse for sin, but the nervous anguish of him who shrieks in the immediate apprehension of an unendurable torture. It was the cry of a man upon the rack, the despairing scream of him who feels himself sinking in a burning dwelling. Such anguish has found an utterance in Stradella's celebrated "Pieta, Signore," which still tells to our ears, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... all mean? Why had these men formed this plot against me? What had I done to merit such deadly vengeance as this?—a torture of ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... wring it from your lips, curse you!" cried Wilde, furiously. "I will torture you here, starve you here, until you go mad and ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... evening he gave way under the torture—turned coward, and started to write to her. Twice he began letters—pleading with her to forget his letter; begging her to come back. And destroyed them with hands that shook like the hands of a sick man. Then the ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... I'm found, I'm in your power, And you may torture me e'en how you list. Where are your chains? these are the self-same arms Which bore them ten long years, nor doubt their weighing Heavy as ever! These same eyes, which bathed So oft with bitterest tears your dungeon-grate, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... all the torments, of all the curses which torture the soul, jealousy of a rival in love is the worst. Enraged, confounded and astonished, it seemed as if my bosom would have instantaneously burst. To conceal my emotions, I left my sister's apartment, after having thanked her for her information, and proceeded to ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... blackest vices; and their want of brilliant qualities is fully compensated by those which, while they dazzle less, do more service to society and more honour to human nature. If, for instance, they have not the magnanimity which would enable them to endure without a murmur the most excruciating torture, neither have they the ferocious cruelty that incites a man to inflict that torture on a helpless fellow-creature. If their gratitude for favours be not lively nor lasting, neither is their resentment of injuries implacable, nor their ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... he do? If he made a rush, he would probably be overpowered and either killed instantly or carried off for torture. If he waited until night for a chance to sneak into camp, the wandering redskins would be pretty apt to surprise him in the darkness, and there would be small chance indeed of escaping with his hair. It was a nasty situation; ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... endless self-torture he reached a certain degree of composure, but life had never any real pleasures to offer him. He never dared to accept any kind of distinction; he never dared to feel himself entitled to a kind word or even well-earned praise: in ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... him, and Mrs. Dollond, who looked charming in her powder and brocade, could not help wondering whether any mortal buttons could stand the strain; and, on the other hand, the dimensions of his patent leather boots were such that standing, for a man of his weight, involved a torture which it was hard to conceal. And yet the veteran was happy—he was positively radiant. He felt that his nephew's success in the world of Art and of Society considerably enhanced his own importance; he was not ashamed to owe a portion of his brilliance to borrowed light—and tonight one could ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... shallow cavities in the floor, of which there cannot have been the slightest sign when the floor was covered with planking. A vaulted passage leads to the south court, and in one corner of this court rises a watch-tower over a horrible little dungeon or chamber of torture. ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... beautiful, imperious, gray-eyed wife with so absorbing and intense a love that the faintest doubt of her was torture inexpressible. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... accident, and not (as in point of fact it was) desired and obtained by him for the purpose of insuring the testimony of experience to his principles, and in order to bind down material nature under the inquisition of reason, and force from her, as by torture, unequivocal answers to prepared and preconceived questions—yet still they would not have been talked of or described as instances of luck, but as the natural results of his admitted genius and known skill. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... little sharp stone formerly used as a measure of weight. Pharmacists always have scruples. There is nothing so torturing as to walk with one or several of these pebbles in the shoe. Spiritual scruples serve the same purpose for the conscience. They torture and torment; they make devotion and prayer impossible, and blind the conscience; they weaken the mind, exhaust the bodily forces, and cause a disease that not infrequently comes to a climax in ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... holding her tongue or appealing to God who had spoken to her and dictated to her that which she had done. In order to force her from her silence or bring her to submit to the Church instead of appealing from it to God, it was proposed to employ the last means of all, torture. On the 9th of May the bishop had Joan brought into the great tower of Rouen Castle; the instruments of torture were displayed before her eyes; and the executioners were ready to fulfil their office, "for to bring ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to torture me—when I slept, my dreams were all of eating. I was home again, and mother was frying doughnuts.... Then I was at the Harvest-Home Festival in the church, and downstairs in the basement there were long tables set. The cold turkey was heaped up ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... be absorbed without permanent injury; seventy-five an extreme resorted to on a very few desperately rare occasions. Beyond that no experience taught the result. Kingozi's sentence was equivalent to death by torture. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... sisterly frankness it seemed that the idea of loving him had never occurred to her, and would not after he had gone. The thought of leaving her heart all disengaged, for some other to come and make a stronger impression, was torture. He never could be satisfied with the closest friendship, therefore he must plainly seek a dearer tie, even though for a time their frank, pleasant relations should be disturbed. He resolved to take no denial, but to give fair warning, before it was too late, that he was laying siege ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the small of one's back. Since my night with Nikitin physical fear really seems to have left me—the whole outward paraphernalia of the war has become an entirely commonplace thing, but it was the Forest that I felt—exactly as though it were playing with me. Wasn't there an old mediaeval torture when they shot arrows at their victim, always just missing him, first on one side, then on another, until at last, tired of the game, they fixed him through the head? Well, that's what the old beast was ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... suggestive of morning callers and a Postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building. There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when the wheels went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, and other instruments of torture; no end of cannon, shields, swords, spears, and guns. There were little tumblers in red breeches, incessantly swarming up high obstacles of red-tape, and coming down, head first, on the other side; and ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... legacy cast a peculiar and perplexing shadow of undefined obligation upon Benham's outlook. His resolution to go round the world carried on his preparations rapidly and steadily, but at the same time his mother's thwarted and angry bearing produced a torture of remorse in him. It was constantly in his mind, like the suit of the importunate widow, that he ought to devote his life to the little lady's happiness and pride, and his reason told him that even if he wanted to make this sacrifice he couldn't; the mere act of making it would produce so ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... full and hard into the face so near his own; and so looking, he realized, what he had not grasped before, that it was the face of a man in torture. The savage grip on his arm told the same story. The fiery eyes that stared at him out of the death-white countenance had the awful look of a man who sees his ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... rather than evil intent had been the cause of their failure. It was enough for Hauptmann Fritz Schneider to know that he was lost in the African wilderness and that he had at hand human beings less powerful than he who could be made to suffer by torture. That he did not kill them outright was partially due to a faint hope that they might eventually prove the means of extricating him from his difficulties and partially that so long as they lived they might still be made ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me," Natasha entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such matters! I have ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... have been less troublesome to throw myself at your feet, bathed in a flood of tears, and to say, 'Oh, have mercy upon me! Free me from this unworthy role which has been forced upon me! Save me from the torture of being compelled to dissimulate, to lie, and to cheat. Virtue dwells in my heart, innocence and truth are upon my lips. I have been forced to play a part that dishonors me. Have mercy upon me, save me from the snares threatening me!'" While saying so, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Devil's Chute until you rode out of sight," he quavered. "He demanded tizwin. I convinced him that Slade took away every drop. He then threatened to seize you for his woman and torture Mr. Lennon, if I did not send down Elsie. I postponed the decision until ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... to set against very serious drawbacks! In these intensely hot and glaring days of mid-October, the only way of enjoying life is to betake oneself to a sailing-boat. Few English folks realize the torture of mosquito-invaded nights on the Riviera. As to mosquito curtains, they afford a remedy ofttimes worse than the disease, keeping out what little air is to be had and admitting, here and there, one mosquito of slenderer bulk and more indomitable temper than ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... is a place where all is perfect. Therefore, in Heaven everybody is exactly like everybody else, and therefore, everybody is thoroughly and completely bored! There is no torture like boredom, Dixon, and—Well, have ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... mingle together astuteness and holiness without any difficulty; he could make innuendoes as naturally as an ordinary man makes statements of fact; he could apply flattery with so unsparing a hand that even Princes of the Church found it sufficient; and, on occasion, he could ring the changes of torture on a human soul with a tact which called forth universal approbation. With such accomplishments, it could hardly be expected that Monsignor Talbot should be remarkable either for a delicate sense of conscientiousness or for an extreme refinement ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... suffered on account of it. I don't speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of real genuine self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of inflicting on its victims. The most sceptical will acknowledge that its powers in this line are only excelled by its apparent animosity. To discover the life that completes and contents our own is not given to many of us poor mortals. Here and there ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... his companion. "Any thing is better than passive submission in such circumstances. I see but little, indeed no hope of escape; but idleness is torture. If I endeavour to raise this boat, will you ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... felt in strikes, in the 1st of May demonstrations, where they promoted the idea of a general strike for an eight hours' day, and in the anti-militarist propaganda in the army, violent prosecutions were directed against them, especially in the Latin countries (including physical torture in the Barcelona Castle) and the United States (the execution of five Chicago Anarchists in 1887). Against these prosecutions the Anarchists retaliated by acts of violence which in their turn were followed by more executions ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... their Christmas festivities there, and that this attempt failed through the Court receiving intimation of the design and suddenly removing to Westminster."[26] Lord Cobham was put to death by cruel torture in St. Giles's Fields, London, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... sank with overwhelming sorrow. Was she really to be given up? was she to leave her new home, her new happiness, her work, Mrs. Perry, Miss Rose,—all to go back to the old torture? Oh no, it could not be. She could never bear it! Mrs. Perry spoke as if she would have to; but what would she herself do there alone? She would be almost frightened ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Guiscard, after having quitted the service, had retired to his estate near Cevennes, where he led a life of much licence. About this time a robbery was committed in his house; he suspected one of the servants, and on his own authority put the man to the torture. This circumstance could not remain so secret but that complaints spread abroad. The offence was a capital one. La Bourlie fled from the realm, and did many strange things until his death, which was still more strange; but of which it is not yet ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... brought to love one whom he hates, or to hate one whom he loves? And to this head must likewise be referred such things as are so abhorrent to human nature, that it regards them as actually worse than any evil, as that a man should be witness against himself, or torture himself, or kill his parents, or not strive to avoid death, and the like, to which no one can be induced by rewards or threats. But if we still choose to say that the commonwealth has the right or authority to order such things, we can conceive of it in no other ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... the brave part of the story. Without saying any more, and notwithstanding the entreaties of his men, who knew that in all probability he was going to a death by torture, for he was so brave that the natives had set a great price upon him, wishing to kill him and use his body for medicine, which they thought would make them as brave as he was, that officer rode out far away into the mountains with only an interpreter and a white ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... attacks the soul. The torture can certainly be very great, especially the apprehension, but questions coming from the distance can be silenced by acceptation of what is close. The weather is sweet and soft, and Nature is indifferent. The dead will not spoil the spring. . ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Vincent Fonseca a Portugall, Purser of the carak, with two others, one an Almaine and the second a Low-dutchman, canoniers: who refusing to make any voluntary report of those things, which were demanded of them, had the torture threatened, the feare whereof at the last wrested from them this intelligence, that within fifteene dayes three other greater caraks then that lately fired would arriue at the same Iland: and that being fiue caraks in the fleet at ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... interminable tails, marking its course when its body is far away from us. Once tangled in its trailing "hair," the unfortunate who has recklessly ventured across the graceful monster's path too soon writhes in prickly torture. Every struggle but binds the poisonous threads more firmly round his body, and then there is no escape; for when the winder of the fatal net finds his course impeded by the terrified human wrestling in its coils, he, seeking no contest with the mightier ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... him. The disgrace of it was torture to his sensitive mind, without the physical chafing to pull him down to bones. Those two weeks had taken off his frame a great deal of the flesh that he had gained during the summer. His gauntness was more pronounced than it ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden |
